CalArts School of Critical Studies Admissions Book

CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF THE ARTS AINROFILAC ETUTITSNI EHT FO STRA

CAL ARTS

School of

C RITICAL S T UD IES

CREATIVE WRITING AESTHETICS AND POLITICS

Immigration: Art/Critique/Process: MA Aesthetics and Politics symposium.

SCHOOL OF

CRITICAL STUDIES

The School of Critical Studies brings together internationally recognized writers, poets, scholars, and thinkers working in both new and traditional forms across a wide variety of disciplines, extending from narrative fiction, performance, and multimedia to cultural criticism and political theory. Critical Studies is a site for generating new ideas—what we define as a “thinking practice”—through engagement with a diverse cross-section of creative practitioners and métiers.

As a Creative Writing MFA student, you will explore a wide variety of traditional and new forms, from narrative fiction to hybrid memoir, from lyric poetry to erasure poems. Led by an acclaimed and aesthetically versatile faculty team—featuring winners of multiple literary, criticism, translation, and arts awards—this program sets high standards for creativity, critical insight, and craft. In particular, the program will invite you to put forward experimental and interdisciplinary work, including original practices that break with conventional categories and set new aesthetic horizons.

The MA Aesthetics and Politics program provides a stimulating forum for you to engage with the complex relationships linking culture, society, and politics in today’s rapidly evolving global context. This course of study is designed for advanced scholars who wish to place their research and writing in a dynamic artscentered environment, as well as artists, curators, journalists, and political activists who are interested in exploring the nexus of art and politics in connection with their respective professional fields.

PR OG RA M IN

C R E AT I V E WRITING A hotbed of creative experimentation, this dynamic and innovative MFA program is designed for advanced writers to explore a range of forms and styles. The program was designed, from its inception, to get over the division between “creative” and “critical.” Here, everything is potentially generative, and you as a writer will determine what forms best serve what you want to express.

Creative Writing at CalArts is one of the few programs in the country where you will not be limited to just one genre of writing.

Students are considered writers in the broadest sense. You can apply with poetry or fiction—but it doesn’t mean that’s what your thesis has to be, doesn’t narrow down which faculty you work with, doesn’t put you on a track for what classes you can or cannot take. The program offers genre-specific workshops, so you can focus on poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, but also on offer are genre-fluid workshops, often organized around a theme.

This idea of hybridity in writing, which has become an exciting new thought at other schools, is where the program originated, putting it ahead of the pack. Accordingly, all faculty have experience across genres and fields, many with Ph.D.s, so they publish as creative writers as well as scholars and performers. That means that in addition to understanding the literary landscape, faculty can also advise you if you choose to pursue opportunities in other fields or further academic study.

The MFA in Creative Writing is a fast-moving program in which you will benefit from being self-directed, and arrive with an understanding of why you’ve come to CalArts, so you can hit the ground running. To help focus your studies, the program offers four different interdisciplinary concentrations that weave a path through the Institute’s course offerings: Documentary Strategies, Image + Text, Writing and its Publics, and Writing + Performativity.

There’s a DIY ethos encouraged in the program, and you will become very adept at navigating different cultural spaces and creating opportunities for yourself and your fellow students.

Together, you will all be developing a writing culture unlike anything seen before.

TWO-YEAR MFA

PR OG RA M IN

A EST H E T I C ST I C S AND POLI The MA in Aesthetics and Politics grew out of some of the most compelling lines of inquiry being carried out at the School of Critical Studies, working with the entire CalArts community, across multiple disciplines. By taking this work up to the next level with a two-year master’s, the program provides a specialized forum in which you’ll focus intensively on thinking and writing about the intersections of art and politics.

The emphasis on rigorous research and scholarship and the unique, Institute-wide approach to creative learning make the program a good fit if you are interested in advanced academic pursuits, including grounding you for future Ph.D. study. At the same time, the program also caters to a very diverse cross-section of artists, filmmakers, writers, curators, architects, journalists, political activists, and other socially engaged practitioners. These students often want to develop their thinking and engage with theory in order to enhance their respective types of practice before going back out into the field. So, if you are more practice-oriented, the MA program offers exposure to new ideas and serves as a means for illuminating possible career pathways, including some options not considered previously.

You will be part of a very eclectic, high-achieving CalArts community with world-class experts in every major creative field, so there’s much more openness to experimentation, to challenging orthodoxies and cultivating new and emerging practices, and to the creative processes of the artist and the thinker and the writer. There is a distinct dynamic in play: theory and criticism can be inventive and original, just as many, if not most, of the artists throughout CalArts incorporate critical thought and political awareness into their artmaking. Above all, the program equips students with a unique combination of creative and analytical skills that enable them to enter professional milieus with confidence and the ability to participate in practical, cultural, and theoretical fields of work.

TWO-YEAR MA (SECOND YEAR IS LOW-RESIDENCY)

SELECTED CREATIVE WRITING ALUMNX HAROLD ABRAMOWITZ AMANDA ACKERMAN JOSÉ FELIPE ALVERGUE ROSE ANDERSEN DIANA ARTERIAN SAM BENJAMIN ANDREW BERARDINI ALLISON CARTER ANDREW CHOATE COLE COHEN NIKKI DARLING COLIN DICKEY TRAVIS DIEHL KEN EHRLICH CARRIBEAN FRAGOZA MALIK GAINES JOY GREGORY NICHOLAS GRIDER ELIZABETH HALL JEREMY HIGHT KENYATTA A.C. HINKLE HENRY HOKE STEVE KANDELL DOUGLAS KEARNEY EMMA KEMP MAXI KIM ANNE-MARIE KINNEY CHERYL KLEIN STEVEN KNEZEVICH GRACE KRILANOVICH BRANDON LABELLE ANDREA LAMBERT JANICE LEE FELICIA LUNA LEMUS ERIC LINDLEY JONATHAN MANN JOE MILAZZO AMANDA MONTEI NIJLA MU’MIN AMARNATH RAVVA ALLIE ROWBOTTOM LAUREN STRASNICK DAVID STROMBERG FREYDA THOMAS MATHEW TIMMONS MEG WHITEFORD EMERSON WHITNEY

SELECTED AESTHETICS AND POLITICS ALUMNX NICOLAS BENACERRAF MANUEL SHVARTZBERG CARRIÓ JOHN D’AMICO WILL ELEY SHOGHIG HALAJIAN JOHANNA HEDVA JUMANA MANNA DANY NAIERMAN NATE SCHULMAN CLAUDIA SLANAR SILLE STORIHLE IRENE TSATSOS

CREATIVE WRITING FACULTY

Tisa Bryant Gabrielle Civil Brian Evenson Michael Leong Anthony McCann Janet Sarbanes Matias Viegener

AESTHETICS AND POLITICS FACULTY

Amanda Beech Michael Bryant Gabrielle Civil Andrew Culp Arne De Boever Brian Evenson Andrea Fontenot Norman Klein Martín Plot Janet Sarbanes

BACK COVER:

MFA Creative Writing reading at Skylight Books.

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